Nigeria Liability Insurance pool looks to 2018 with positivity

Not unmindful of challenges in the business environment, Nigeria Liability Insurance Pool says it looks into 2018 with positivity, even as it prepares to go into new liability areas.

Edwin Friday Igbiti, chairman of the Pool said at its Annual General Meeting in Lagos that the company will delve into new areas amongst which are new emerging liability risks, such as oil and energy, as well as forming a new parallel Poll with new members.

Igbiti said that 2018 is an important year for the country as it prepares for election in 2019, but stated that in spite of the uncertainties that usually accompany election cycles in Nigeria, the Pool will be well positioned to weather the storm. 

Nigerian Liability Insurance Pool started in 1988 by an association of some insurance companies in Nigeria with the objective of domesticating liability risks within the industry.

Then, the industry was facing the challenge of getting oversea reinsurance for liability risk and so they thought of coming together as a pool to bridge the gap and underwrite that class of risks. The pool is an aspect of reinsurance. It is not the conventional reinsurance, so you can say is a quasi reinsurance. But, their duty is to cover the risk of their members alone and not the entire industry.  From the pool, members that suffer losses are assisted to pay their claims. Specifically, the pool focuses on liability aspect of motor insurance, public and product liability, liability aspect of contractors-all-risk and workmen’s compensation insurance. The pool has gone through a lot of transformation in membership beginning from 2001 and recapitalization in 2005 and finally consolidation in 2010, now having 10 members from initial 25, earlier on.

Following this transformation, there was an idea to expand the scope and horizon of the pool in terms of business it does, to make it stronger and more robust, so there was introduction of director and officers’ liability insurance, which is now part of the business where it is getting patronage. “We also have in the pipeline professional indemnity, employer’s contingent liability insurance and we are looking at their workability”.

Its members are her clients and they are the shareholders. They bring their businesses every quarter, make cession to us and when there is claim we pay. They are contributors, they are shareholders and do not need to renew their membership annually.